The Commonwealth Games - The Joy Of Whingeing

The summer of televised
sport drew to a close last night and the green ink complainers will
now have to select some other topic to act as the focus of their ire.
The displacement the sport has caused to the TV schedules had become
the principle source of furious letters from those that regulate
their lives by repeats of Cash in the Attic.

They are differentiated
from those doing the running and jumping by their bellies sticking
out more than their bums do. Both groups were red in the face.

For those of us who
were interested in the action, the athletes were playing games, the
audience was playing follow-the-coverage.

The whiners must be the
reason why any event shown by the BBC this summer was impossible to
follow unless you were unemployed and had nothing at all to do for
the day. Trying to record a competition shown by the Beeb was like
chasing house flies. They would say: “This event will now continue
on BBC2, while on BBC1 we will show you another chance to see some
carefully preserved character effortfully value some old tat that a
Doris, or a Sidney has just blown the dust off."

The letters of fury the
timorous television bods must get when any change is made to the
soothing soup of daytime television schedules must be the reason they
switched coverage, mid-hurdle from one channel to the next and back
again.

That, and a misplaced
sense that The News must not be moved for anything, so the event you
were trying to record was shifted to another channel to make way for
the bulletin that summarised the event you were trying to record. And
all so they would get fewer complaints. Well, I'd like to complain...

The one event that was
not shifted about like a wrestler's jock strap was the closing
ceremony of the Commonwealth Games, featuring a collection of
countries that Britain holds so little sway over that it seemed like
a meeting of human rights refuseniks.

Lulu started the
evening off with something of a bang. Quite surprisingly youthful,
pert and forceful for someone who must be...(just working it
out)...from the Pleistocene Era. She belted out “Shout” and
seemed in full possession of all of her vocal chords and star
wattage.

All about, on the field
there was something with tents, like an introductory lesson on
camping in inclement weather. Those athletes that did not have
engagements with their sponsors, huddled together round the stage for
warmth in the Glaswegian summer evening.

There followed drawn
out speeches that might have sounded fine in front of the bedroom
mirror of the grandees' complimentary hotel rooms, but were so long
that they bordered on rude for the hopping crowd of twitching
athletic muscle that were raring to go on the pitch.

From a lectern that
looked like a TV station logo from the 1980's, one man in particular,
His Royal Highness Prince Tunku Imran of Malaysia, a country that
could show North Korea a thing or two about human rights abuses,
droned on for what seemed an age. It was torture. He sucked up the
approval of the crowd whenever he said how great Glasgow was, which
was often, as though the applause was for himself, rather than the
people doing the applauding.

He was clearly not used
to being interrupted and commandeered the stage for so long that
those around were visibly ageing, apart from Lulu, who continued to
get younger.

The Australians took
the baton and presented us with a perfectly nice singing lady over
which the BBC captioned the message that we did not have much time to
wait for Kylie Minogue. That has to be one of the rudest, most
unthinking things that you could do to a performer.

She sang in front of a
team who moved TV screens back and forth to make shapes that
perfectly framed the changing images shown on them. This was maximal
use of minimal budget. It was such a simple, brilliant effect that it
was surprising that no-one had done it before. Perhaps they had and I
hadn't seen it. It will certainly be repeated by others until it
delights no more.

More speechifying
followed and then The Scrunching Of The Flag. The Commonwealth
standard was borne aloft through the athletes collected on the field
who, in their enthusiasm, managed to screw it up like a used tissue.
It was then “folded” and passed to a matronly lady, like a
student on his first visit home from college would dump his laundry
in his mother's hands.

There was a film of
forthcoming attractions at the next Games, which will be held in the
sun kissed, surfer paradise that is the Gold Coast of Australia. This
had the effect of making Glasgow appear even bleaker and greyer than
it actually is, which is very.

After much trailing and
promises that we would not have to wait much longer, Kylie took to
the stage. A cold, detached, nasally Madonna impersonator with worse
songs and less personality. The backing dancers looked like they had
stepped off the set of an S&M remake of the film Tron. The best
you could say of her performance was that she was singing live. No
backing tape could have sounded that bad.

In a flourish of
inexpensive fireworks, it was over. No more World Cup, no more
Wimbledon and no more Commonwealth games. What are the complainers
going to whine about now?